PKK condemns Turkey’s military airstrikes against its fighters

October 14, 2014 By administrator

Members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party

Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has condemned Turkish military airstrikes against its fighters in the southeast of the country as violation of a ceasefire with the government.

The PKK issued a statement on Tuesday, saying the Turkish military airstrikes on its fighters violate a ceasefire agreed between the two sides two years ago.

“For the first time in nearly two years, an air operation was carried out against our forces by the occupying Turkish Republic army,” the PKK said in the statement, adding, “These attacks against two guerrilla bases at Daglica violated the cease-fire.”

The group added that the raids have not caused casualties among its members.

Turkish media reported earlier in the day that the military launched airstrikes on two PKK bases in the Daglica area in Hakkari Province close to the Iraqi border.

“F-16 and F-4 warplanes which took off from (bases in the southeastern provinces of) Diyarbakir and Malatya rained down bombs on PKK targets after they attacked a military outpost in the Daglica region,” Hurriyet daily said.

The strikes reportedly followed three days of PKK shelling on a military outpost in the Kurdish-majority province near the Iraqi border.

Ankara launched a peace process with the PKK in 2012 to end the Kurdish struggle for independence.

The PKK declared a ceasefire with Turkey last March after the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan ordered an end to the armed campaign for autonomy.

The attacks come as Kurds in Turkey are angry at the government for preventing them from crossing into neighboring Syria to join the fight against ISIL terrorists in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.

Ankara also refuses to intervene along its border with Syria where ISIL militants have besieged the mainly Kurdish town.

According to reports, the Takfiri militants have taken half of the Syrian city.

Turkey, Officials say 348 kurds detained in İstanbul in Kobani protests

October 14, 2014 By administrator

A total of 348 people have been detained in the past week during protests that erupted over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) attacks on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, security officials announced on Tuesday. Report Today Zaman

The İstanbul Police Department said in a statement released on Tuesday that 348 people were detained between Oct. 6 and Oct. 13 in İstanbul and that 102 of those detained were minors. The statement said 336 detainees were sent to court for arrest and 10 were arrested.
According to the statement, among the materials seized from the suspects were 111 Molotov cocktails, two unlicensed guns and three pump rifles.

People took to the streets last Tuesday following reports that ISIL was very near to capturing the town of Kobani, which is being defended by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian-based affiliate of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Fighting still continues in the Syrian town, which is situated very near the Turkish border.

More than 30 people have been killed during the protests, mainly in southeastern Turkey, while over 350 people — including 139 members of security forces — were injured. Over a thousand protestors have been detained in connection with the protests, which erupted in 35 provinces across Turkey.

Kurds see that IS is a Turkish subcontractor used against the Kurds.

October 13, 2014 By administrator

The state is fighting Kurds through IS.’

On Oct. 7, I joined my colleague and old friend Hasan Cemal at dinner in Istanbul. While I was on my way to the restaurant, I learned about disturbances in the Kurdish-inhabited provinces of Turkey, loss of lives and the imposition of a curfew in six provincial centers and a number of districts.

By Cengiz Candar is a columnist for Al-Monitor‘s Turkey Pulse.

As we sat down for dinner, we were informed that in different areas in Istanbul clashes had erupted between protesters and security forces; Cemal was receiving calls nonstop. He told me early the next morning that he would go to the border province of Mardin to be hosted by Mayor Ahmet Turk, a veteran Kurdish politician and perhaps the most respected Kurdish name in Turkish public opinion.

This news did not surprise me. Cemal is considered the dean of the Turkish journalism corps. He has been in the profession for over 40 years, and he served as the editor-in-chief of Turkey’s oldest paper Cumhuriyet for a decade. During the military rule of the early 1980s, he was on the Executive Committee of the International Press Institute. After a long and brilliant professional career, he dedicated himself to field reporting mainly on the Kurdish issue. He traveled frequently and developed strong connections among the Kurdish political elite. He just published a new book titled, “Kurdistan Gunlukleri” (“Kurdistan Chronicles”), about his extensive travels and contacts in Rojava, the Syrian Kurdish area adjacent to Turkey’s border.

While the aggression of the Islamic State (IS) on Kobani was underway with a reluctant Turkey standing by, watching extremist Islamist forces on the verge of slaughtering the Kurds and thinking of its repercussions in Turkey’s Kurdish population, Cemal could not do anything else but go to the region to report.

And that’s what he did. These are excerpts of a first piece he wrote on Oct. 8 under the title “Serhildan-I” (“Uprising-I” in Kurdish). Reading Cemal’s impressions made the title even more interesting: “Ahmet Turk said, ‘Even I am confounded by this Kobani issue. I was thinking that in the end Turkey would help the Kurds. I was wrong. It didn’t.’”

Cemal believes for Ankara to leave the Kurds alone to face the barbaric IS gangs was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. He wrote, “Those who had never voted for us, those who had supported the AKP [Justice and Development Party] were all at Suruc. They are all in the streets now. Ankara’s policy of let’s leave it to IS to cleanse the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] an PYD [Democratic Union Party] and to teach them a lesson has destroyed everything. Beheadings by IS, the rape of women and Turkey’s passivity in the face of all this barbarity has become a breaking point for the Kurds. … Before it was the guerrillas who said that this state cannot be trusted, but now the people in the street are saying it, too. Kurds see how the state is turning a blind eye to IS.”

“The TV was on. We were watching the Sterk and Ronahi Kurdish channels. The news ticker read: ‘A statement by the KCK [Kurdistan Communities Union]: Kobani is AKP’s new war concept.’ A second statement followed: ‘Don’t leave the streets. Every place is Kobani, every place is resistance.’ Striking pictures were aired of streets full of people; places on fire. Ahmet Turk said, ‘I don’t remember anything like this. This is the first time. This is a true uprising, a serhildan. Last night, the governor called me to say, Tell them to go home. It was like a joke. Who is going to listen to us? In popular actions like this a point comes when you can no longer keep a rein.’

“In referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ahmet Turk said, ‘In the people’s eyes, Erdogan is now a dictator. What kind of arrogance is that?’

“Ahmet Turk continued, ‘Listen, what we have been living through for the past two days is serhildan of Kobani, an uprising. It is beyond an organization. It is an uprising of the people. This state’s mentality has not changed in substance. Look, years later tanks are back on the streets. With this sort of state mentality Kurdish equality is a false dream. You can’t solve the issue with this mentality.'”

Cemal then quotes views of some anonymous Kurds: “On separatism one of them said, ‘The AKP’s policy is to back IS. That’s the policy that is dividing Turkey. Kurds now see this reality. They understand that the solution process is not seeking to solve the question but to undo the Kurds.’

“Another added, ‘Kurds see that IS is a subcontractor used against the Kurds. The state is fighting Kurds through IS.’

“Another said, ‘Erdogan put IS and the PKK in the same basket; called both of them terror organizations. This really hurt the Kurds. They couldn’t believe it.'”

At midnight on Oct. 9, Cemal wrote the “Serhildan-II” piece from the Kurdish town of Suruc on the frontier separated by the railroad from Kobani:

“You hear grievances against Erdogan every step of the way. He said Kobani is about to fall and will fall. Is he aware that Diyarbakir has already fallen? If it continues like this, may God help us; the entire country will be set on fire. Is Erdogan aware of this?”

Arzu Yilmaz is a young academic of Kurdish origin. She is a doctoral candidate in the School of Political Sciences at Ankara University, and she has a reputation as the most perceptive academic personality in regard to the Kurdish issue. For her Ph.D. dissertation, she spent more than two years in Dahuk, Iraqi Kurdistan, where she studied the Kurdish political movement. The moment Turkey’s Kurdish provinces erupted, she wrote the following:

“Don’t let anyone play the three monkeys. Turkey is openly heading to war, not only across its borders but also inside. Kurds have risen. In Kurdistan, there is popular uprising with unprecedented popular participation. … What is clear is that it doesn’t matter what city, town, village. It is like a bomb ready to go off.”

A small news item that may not have attracted the attention of many people, for me is the most striking. Teyrenbazen Azadiya Kurdistan (TAK), believed to be a faction within the PKK that was responsible for a number of acts of urban terrorism, issued a statement that read: “It is time to call to account the owner of the gun barrels pointing at Kobani. From now on, all major cities are our fields of action and all enemy forces are our primary targets. When Kobani is burning, Turkish cities will not be sleeping comfortably. TAK will transfer the conflagration at Kobani to enemy forces in big cities and turn them to hell.”

A media report on Oct. 9 described TAK’s record as follows: “TAK, which is part of the PKK but operates independently from the organization, has until now claimed responsibility for many bomb attacks against big cities and tourist destinations. The attacks in Kusadasi, Marmaris and Antalya in 2005 and 2006, and [the attacks] on June 22, 2010, in Istanbul that killed five people, four of them soldiers, were among those claimed by TAK. The attack on Oct. 31, 2010, at Taksim in Istanbul that wounded 32 people, and [the attack] on Sept. 20, 2011, in Ankara that killed three were also claimed by this organization.”

Turkey is heading down a very dangerous path toward violence, with the potential of a civil war and/or intercommunal fighting. This would be very bad news. Even worse, the PKK and its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan may not be able to control the developments.

We will be watching the scope of the spontaneity of the Kurdish outrage in Turkey and the talent of the Kurdish political elite to handle the situation.

For the government — which seems to have lost its ability to think comprehensively — the task to prevent Turkey from drifting into a civil war depends mainly on the Kurdish political elite and their control over the new generation of Kurds, whose outrage has grown further with the situation in Kobani.

Because if this is a “serhildan,” then it may be the harbinger of worse to come.

Pro- and anti-ISIL students clash at Turkish universities

October 13, 2014 By administrator

A series of tense incidents has taken place at some of Turkey’s universities, including İstanbul University and the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), over the past couple of weeks as pro- and anti-Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) groups of students continue to clash. Today ZAMAN report

Twenty-seven pro-ISIL students were detained by police after a quarrel erupted with anti-ISIL students at İstanbul University’s faculty of economics and administrative sciences on Monday.

The pro-ISIL students, who reportedly had their faces covered, wearing black hats and holding sticks, were heard shouting phrases like, “We are Muslim students,” as they were taken to police vehicles. Nine of the detained students are allegedly affiliated with Muslim Youths Association which is known for its radical Islamist tendencies.

The detained students were taken to the İstanbul Police Department’s anti-terror office for interrogation after undergoing health checks at a hospital.

Some anti-ISIL students at the university’s campus issued a press statement after the attack, saying: “We, students of the İstanbul University, have been subject to the aggression of ISIL supporters who have blood on their hands. ISIL militants are known for their aggression. They murder children and rape women in Rojava and Kobani. Those pro-ISIL ‘so-called’ students with black masks attacked us with sticks.”

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has been the target of criticism for failing to act against ISIL to save Kobani. Violent protests against ISIL attacks and AK Party policy led to the deaths of 34 people last week

The anti-ISIL students also accused the AK Party government for failing to act against ISIL activity in Turkey and blamed university security for doing nothing to halt the attack. “Look at those people. They come to our university and make propaganda in favor of ISIL without any prevention. They get their power from the AK Party. The government is sending truckloads of guns to the ISIL gangs to murder people in Rojava. We would not be surprised if ISIL militants organize attacks on Turkish cities,” the students said.

On Oct. 1, three pro-ISIL students were detained by police after a quarrel erupted between students at the university. The students who were attacked said pro-ISIL students came after them while they were hanging anti-ISIL banners around the campus.

On Oct. 4, a fight again erupted after pro-ISIL students attacked another group holding an anti-ISIL protest inside the university.

In a seperate case on Oct. 10, a student of İstanbul’s prestigious Boğaziçi University and the grandson of famed lawyer Nejat Ağırnaslı was killed while fighting against the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The sociology graduate student had joined the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to fight against the terrorist group in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Kobani, where battles have raged over the past few weeks. The 30-year-old man traveled to the region as a member of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) and was one of many who have been crossing the border to take up arms against ISIL forces.

His father, Hikmet Cur, released a statement saying: “I lost my son, my comrade, my Nejat, in Kobani. Although he had a very bright future, he chose revolutionary solidarity. He kept his promise. He has not let me down.” He went on to say, “I bow down to him with respect.”

Meanwhile, police used water cannons and tear gas on Oct. 9 to disperse demonstrations held at two universities in Ankara in protest ISIL attacks on the Syrian-Kurdish town of Kobani. At ODTÜ, demonstrators who wanted to march from the university to the Ankara office of the ruling AK Party were blocked by police at the school’s gate. Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Erdoğan slams modern ‘Lawrences of Arabia’ in Middle East

October 13, 2014 By administrator

ISTANBUL – Agence France-Presse

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Oct. 13 launched an angry tirade at modern day “Lawrence of Arabias” who he said were bent on causing trouble in the Middle East.

British officer T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, helped Arab leaders fight a guerrilla insurgency against the forces of the Ottoman Empire in the desert during World War I.

Especially after the hugely successful 1960s film, Lawrence is still regarded as a hero in Britain and many Arab countries. But Erdoğan made clear he saw the iconic British officer – who famously adopted customs of Arab dress – as a symbol of unwanted outside meddling in a region where Turkish influence should count.

“Lawrence was an English spy disguised as an Arab,” Erdoğan said in a televised speech at a university in Istanbul. “There are new voluntary Lawrences, disguised as journalists, religious men, writers and terrorists,” he added.

“It is our duty to explain to the world that there are modern Lawrences who were fooled by a terror organization,” he added, without specifying which organization.

Elsewhere in his speech, he also slammed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as his former ally turned foe, the exiled Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.

“They are making Sykes-Picot agreements hiding behind freedom of press, a war of independence or jihad,” he said, referring to the agreement between Britain and France that sought to divide up the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence.

Lawrence, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1935, acted as liason between British forces and Arab leaders during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule.

His status as an iconic figure of modern history was cemented by the 1962 film directed by David Lean starring Peter O’Toole in the title role. Erdoğan’s comments on Lawrence come as Turkey seeks to preserve regional stability amid the advance of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants who are now fighting Kurds for the Syrian town of Kobane on its border.

“Each conflict in this region has been designed a century ago” when the borders of the Middle East were redrawn after World War I, said Erdoğan. “It is our duty to stop this,” he said.

October/13/2014

Turkey, Erdogan wants to strengthen the crackdown after recent pro-Kurdish riots

October 12, 2014 By administrator

Turkish Islamic-conservative government will strengthen its legislative framework to combat violence during protests after the pro-Kurdish riots that rocked the country this week, said Sunday President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The Republic of Turkey is not a state if it was not able to bend a few thugs. They burn but they will pay the price. We will do more, “promised Mr. Erdogan in a speech in (…)

Death toll from Turkey clashes rises to 37

October 11, 2014 By administrator

The death toll from clashes between Turkish police and pro-Kurdish protesters across the country has risen to 37.

Speaking to reporters in the capital Ankara on Friday, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said 31 people were killed and 351 others injured in the protests that resumed for the fourth consecutive day in various cities, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

“This spiral of violence should immediately be stopped,” Ala said, adding, “Everyone should do their part to put an end to these incidents. We should all stand in solidarity with each other.”

Over 1,000 protesters have been detained in 35 provinces, he noted.

Hours later, Turkish news agencies reported that six more injured people, including two police officers, died in hospitals.

Police used tear gas and plastic bullets to disperse the protesters who were trying to march to Istanbul’s Taksim Square on Friday. Several people were detained in the crackdown.

The protesters are outraged at the Turkish government for its stance on the ongoing fighting in Syria’s Kurdish town of Kobane.

They accuse Ankara of inaction over the crimes committed by the ISIL Takfiri terrorists by preventing Turkish Kurds to join Kobane’s citizens in their fight against the militants.

The ISIL terror group launched its assault on Kobane three weeks ago, forcing 200,000 mainly Kurdish residents to flee into neighboring Turkey.

The terrorists have committed widespread acts of violence, including mass executions, abductions, torture and forcing women into slavery in the areas they have seized in Iraq and Syria.

Armed PKK back in Turkey, senior group leader says

October 11, 2014 By administrator

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has deployed armed forces back to Turkey, said Cemil Bayık, a senior leader of the organization, also retreting his pessimism about the recent talks between the Turkish government and the PKK.

The PKK will restart fights in case killings of Kurds continue in Kobane, the Syrian border town where the clashes between the armed Kurdish forces and Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have contiued since more than three weeks.

News agencies report that ISIL keeps advancing in and outside the town, from where more than 150,000 people fled to Turkey.

“If things continue this way, the guerrilas will fight to defend our people. The core task of the guerillas is to defend the people,” Bayık reportedly said.

A group of PKK launched the symbolic withdrawal in May 2013, as part of the talks to resolve the decades-long Kurdish issue.

Bayık did not mention how many militants were sent back to the Turkish soil.

“As the government continues to deploy soldiers to the southeast and east, we decided to take action,” saying that a military action motion approved at the Turkish Parliament on earlier this week was “a declaration of war” against them.

A total of 37 people were killed this week’s unrest that broke at demostrations in the country, densely at provinces with high Kurdish population.

The PKK calls on government to do more for the Kurds trapped in Kobane. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan said Oct. 10 that Turkish soldiers were not mercenaries.

UN envoy Call for Turkey to let the Kurdish volunteers to protect Kobane

October 10, 2014 By administrator

The special UN envoy for Syria Staffan De Mistura on Friday called on Turkey to allow the Syrian Kurdish volunteers back across the border to rescue the city of Kobane attacked by jihadist Islamic state group.

“We call on the Turkish authorities to allow the flow of refugees to enter the city to support its action of self-defense,” said the envoy in a press conference in Geneva, while Turkey banned yet to refugees who crossed the border from Syria to cross back the other way.

He said fears of a “massacre”. “Remember Srebrenica” in the former Yugoslavia, he added. Mr. De Mistura, Pholos satellite support, explained that “10,000 to 13,000 people are at a place in the border area -between Turkey and Syria-and many are still inside the city.” “If it falls, civilians are most likely murdered,” said the diplomat.

“Since Kobane will likely fall if it does not help, let those who want to go to join self-defense, with enough equipment, the equipment can do many things,” said Mr. De Mistura for Turkey.

“It is not through UN resolutions that IE will stop,” he has said. “Our appeal to Turkey is that it takes extra steps to stop the advance of IE, if not all of us, including Turkey, will miss” Has he said.

Jihadists of the Islamic State (AEs) were able to advance in Kobané, became a symbol of resistance to the ultraradical group responsible for atrocities in Syria and Iraq, despite the strikes of the international coalition.

More than three weeks after launching the offensive to take this strategic Kurdish city in northern Syria, besieged south sides, east and west, the jihadists have taken the third since Monday and try to make their way to the northern limit of Kobané, about one km from the Turkish border.

Geneva, 10 October 2014 (AFP) –

Turkey’s Hegemonial Ventures in Syria and Iraq

October 10, 2014 By administrator

BY SETO BOYADJIAN, ESQ.

As the U.S.-led air strikes targeted the Islamic State (IS) fighters across the Syrian frontier with Turkey, the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani became more forsaken than ever. The township is now at the mercy of IS militants, who are poised to capture it after three weeks of siege.

Kobani, which is the Kurdish name of the township, is known by its Arabic name as Ayn al Arab. Its original name was Arabounar, given by the survivors of the Armenian Genocide who established it as a haven from Turkish atrocities.

No one is lifting a finger to protect the township and its people from certain slaughter by the IS henchmen. Least of all Turkey, whose armed forces and tanks are within sight across the border, yet they are acting as spectators to the calamity befalling on Kobani.

Turkey’s inaction is very typical toward all Syrian and Iraqi areas that are similarly situated as Kobani. This inaction is deliberate, because it veils Turkey’s hegemonial objectives in Syria and Iraq that were once part of the Ottoman Empire.

What lies behind this transparent veil represents the underpinnings of Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman aspirations. As territories belonging to the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago, Syria with its strategic location and Iraq with its petroleum riches are coveted prizes in the eyes of Turkey. They cannot be reincorporated into Turkey, but they must surely be brought under Turkish influence via the imposition of the kind of leadership in Bagdad and Damascus that is docile to Turkey.

To achieve this objective, the current governing leadership in Syria and Iraq must be weakened and thereafter replaced by “friendly” faces. This approach explains why since 2010 Turkey has been training, arming and assisting a garden variety of terrorist militants, including Al-Qaeda elements, to carry out their insurgency in Syria and Iraq. It also explains the current Turkish inaction in the face of IS onslaughts against townships such as Kobani. The Turkish motto of the day is: Let IS disintegrate Syria and destabilize Iraq. The more the disintegration and destabilization progress, the better are Turkey’s chances to reach its hegemonial prospects over its two neighbors who are supposed to be sovereigns.

Turkey views the insurgents in Syria and Iraq as natural allies in terms of enhancing its hegemonial objectives. Its belated and reluctant accession to the U.S. led coalition against IS will hardly bring any changes in its ties with the insurgent elements. Recent statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan evidence Turkey’s double-talk on the matter of the fight against IS and its militants.

Last Tuesday, in a televised speech in the eastern city of Gaziantep, Erdogan claimed that air-strikes were insufficient and that “ground operation” was needed to defeat the militants. He said, “The terror will not be over… unless we cooperate for a ground operation,” adding, “I am telling the West … dropping bombs from the air will not provide a solution.” These all add up to one solution in the eyes of Erdogan – “ground operation” is needed and such an operation can only be carried out by Turkey’s armed forces.

Erdogan’s solution, therefore, is to obtain a free ticket to occupy northern Syria. Yet this ticket gets even cheaper if one is to follow Erdogan’s recommendation for a final solution to the IS threat. A week earlier, he reiterated his call for a “no-fly zone” to protect against attack against Syrian air force. He maintained, “A no-fly zone must be declared and this no fly-zone must be secured,” claiming that he has already discussed this matter with President Obama and Vice President Biden.

The sum total of these recommendations yield Turkish armed forces a free pass into northern Syria – “no-fly zone”, protection from Syrian air attacks, then a smooth ground operation led by the Turkish army. As they say it in Turkish, “gel guzelim, gel” (“come baby, come”).

Of course this recipe carries with it yet another prize – the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime from power. According to a statement made earlier, Erdogan said that Turkey will fight against IS and other militants, however it will adhere to its aim of seeing Bashar al-Assad removed from power. As Erdogan put it, Turkey will fight IS, yet “We will continue to prioritize our aim to remove the Syrian regime, to help protect the territorial integrity of Syria and to encourage a constitutional, parliamentary government system which embraces all citizens.”

The real issue then becomes – who is Turkey fighting against? The answer is very obvious. Turkish fight against IS may only be a side-show. Turkey’s real fight is for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and his regime and their replacement with a government docile to Turkey.

Hopefully, President Obama and the State Department are not overlooking Erdogan’s designs in Syria. These are designs that are incompatible with U.S. policy objectives and work counter to U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East. In this sense, Erdogan and Turkey continue to act as spoilers to U.S. objectives in that region.

Some 95 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George faced the same kind of Turkish bravado. This was back in June 1919, when Damat Farid Pasha, the Prime Minister (or the Grand Vizier) of the disintegrating Ottoman empire, presented himself with a memorandum to the Allied Powers at the French Foreign Ministry in Paris. Farid Pasha presented the Allies with many claims and proposals to save his Empire from further disintegration. Among his claims, the Pasha also presented that “In Asia, the Turkish lands are bounded on the south by the provinces of Mosul and Diyarbakir, as well as a part of Aleppo as far as the Mediterranean.”

After the Pasha left, the allies rejected the Ottoman claims. As for the Pasha’s claims, President Wilson said he had never seen anything more “stupid,” while Prime Minister Lloyd George considered the Pasha’s presentation a “good joke.”

Now, another Turkish leader with Ottoman penchants, namely Turkey’s President and former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is making a similar claim.

Will President Obama display President Wilson’s courage and call Erdogan’s designs “stupid”? Will Vice President Biden manifest Prime Minister Lloyd George’s wit and treat Erdogan’s plans as a “good joke?”